that of
England. Fallen from its commercial and maritime grandeur, Holland had
then already entered upon its epoch of decline. Like Genoa and Venice,
when new roads of commerce had dispossessed them of their old mercantile
supremacy, it was forced to lend out to other nations its capital, grown
too large for the vessels of its own commerce. Its fatherland had begun
to lie there where the best interest for its capital was paid. Russia,
therefore, proved an immense market, less for the commerce than for the
outlay of capital and men. To this moment Holland has remained the
banker of Russia. At the time of Peter they supplied Russia with ships,
officers, arms, and money, so that his fleet, as a contemporary writer
remarks, ought to have been called a Dutch rather than a Muscovite one.
They gloried in having sent the first European merchant ship to St.
Petersburg, and returned the commercial privileges they had obtained
from Peter, or hoped to obtain from him, by that fawning meanness which
characterizes their intercourse with Japan. Here, then, was quite
another solid foundation than in England for the Russianism of
statesmen, whom Peter I. had entrapped during his stay at Amsterdam, and
the Hague in 1697, whom he afterwards directed by his ambassadors, and
with whom he renewed his personal influence during his renewed stay at
Amsterdam in 1716-17. Yet, if the paramount influence England exercised
over Holland during the first _decennia_ of the 18th century be
considered, there can remain no doubt that the proclamations against
Sweden by the States-General would never have been issued, if not with
the previous consent and at the instigation of England. The intimate
connection between the English and Dutch Governments served more than
once the former to put up precedents in the name of Holland, which they
were resolved to act upon in the name of England. On the other hand, it
is no less certain that the Dutch statesmen were employed by the Czar to
influence the British ones. Thus Horace Walpole, the brother of the
"Father of Corruption," the brother-in-law of the Minister, Townshend,
and the British Ambassador at the Hague during 1715-16, was evidently
inveigled into the Russian interest by his Dutch friends. Thus, as we
shall see by-and-by, Theyls, the Secretary to the Dutch Embassy at
Constantinople, at the most critical period of the deadly struggle
between Charles XII. and Peter I., managed affairs at the same time for
t